The Fear Monger: The Changeling Remake, Claymation Haunted Houses And German Samurai Attack This Week

Good day, frolickers in all things dripping. It’s time for another brain-cringing trip through the latest in horror’s more noteworthy atrocities. Our genre is generally free from rumors, and also free from budgets and mainstream attention, so I guess there’s a tradeoff. That said, this week actually has a couple of premature news items of note, so I guess these times, they are a-changin’. Or whatever.

One of those involves microbudget mastermind Jason Blum putting it out there that the script for Sinister 2, written by Scott Derrickson and Robert Cargill, has been completed and is technically set for a summer 2015 release, and that he wants Derrickson back to direct. But who knows if that’ll happen.

What we do know is that the awesome sauce that was the Israeli darkly comedic thriller Big Bad Wolves is getting a Blu-ray/DVD release on April 22 from Magnolia Home Entertainment, which includes at least a couple of making-of featurettes. Plus, we’ve got St. Patrick’s Day coming, and WWE Studios is going to celebrate by debuting a trailer for Leprechaun: Origins on Monday. So, there’s that. Here’s WWE’s Hornswoggle giving the world that news.

Now, on with this week's column!

In Fear Director Could Possibly Direct The Changeling Remake

Horror is obviously no stranger to endless remakes, but it’s rare when the genuine classics get tapped for updates. NBC is bringing Rosemary’s Baby back for a miniseries, and Peter Medak’s legendary 1980 haunted house flick The Changeling has had a remake screenplay floating around for a while, but the latest comes from British filmmaker Jeremy Lovering, who directed the recently released thriller In Fear, which also mostly utilizes a single setting to evoke terror. Talking about it with Fangoria, he gave his point-of-view in bringing this tale back to today’s audiences.

"I’m really nervous about it, for obvious reasons. The original is an extraordinarily good film, and I’ve tried to take a kind of alternative point of view – doing the scenes you don’t see, the ones in between those that are in the film…It’s the same producers [as the original] who want to make it, and it has been a very interesting process, but I’m still trying to decide whether it’s the right thing to do or not."

I’m not at all a fan of this remake happening, but he sounds like he’s coming at it with the right amount of trepidation. Bravado never fares well when it comes to haunted houses, as those are the folks that get caught up first.